Naryan map

nenets autonomous okrug

Naryan-Mar Map

Town map with stories, legends and friendly house names of Naryan-Mar, that we made together with the help of town residents

Iceberg, Orange, Dollar, Yellow House, Chinese Wall and the Red Riding Hood. What brings together all these things? Naryan-Mar, the capital city of NAO and its inhabitants call the houses they live in a very non-formal manner that we wanted to share with the world. It was such a successful project that a year later a book of town legends was written based on it.

Client: NAO Business Development Center

Work: Research, communication, map design, merch

2019 … 2023

NAO might be the land of the white, however Naryan-Mar is the land of vivid roofs

NAO might be the land of the white, however Naryan-Mar is the land of vivid roofs. Map is vivid, colorful, like the town Naryan-Mar. Region is mostly white most time of the year, so people prefer everything colored around.

Naryan-Mar as seen from the drone

Not a single building in Naryan-Mar remained unnoticed. The most difficult was to capture the roof colors: glad we had a set of photos from the drones

Igor Makovsky

ART-DIRECTOR

We've presented our map to the public on the city day, 15th September, 2019. People quite liked it.

How it all started

When we got to Naryan-Mar for the first time we had been quite impressed by the video of these two guys, who showed the inmost subculture of the town to the public, which is fun.

When we formed a round table with the city residents, we asked them about the video. They laughed and confirmed, that most of the topics, those two guys rapped about, are present in real time. The team helped us to put all the interesting stories about Naryan-Mar on the list and described them a bit.

Then we've put it on the interactive map, added some photos and descriptions just not to forget differences between the "grasshopper", "dollar" and "the pickle" buildings. Photographers contributed a lot.

White bricks went short when the house was built so the last level had been built with the red ones. That's how it got its name — the Red Riding Hood.

Katherine Nikolaeva

TOWN RESIDENT AND HOTEL "PUSTOZERSK" MANAGER

Offline map

Our maps are placed across the streets of Naryan-Mar and have built-in lighting for those polar winters.

Online map

We love to put our maps online. Here you can check it on naryan-map.ru together with a source. It is mostly use for huge interactive screens on exhibitions and in the Arctic Tourist Center.

Local cafe

We've planned to put all these stories to the local "Naryan City" cafe with our map elements implemented in its interior. Menu had to include those names as dish titles also. Yet, to be fair, the entrepreneur lated refused to use this idea later, because of finance problems and later closed his business. He promised to return, though.

Maps in action

Etrepreneurs in Naryan-Mar order special edition of upgraded highlighted maps, that make a good use of lighting and make the space cozier.

Highlighted maps for those polar winters can be seen across Naryan-Mar. Cafe "Teplo"

Souvenirs

As always, we use elements from the map as the base for creating all kinds of souvenirs: badges, cups, plates and even plaids to warm your heart.

Set of cups with map illustrations

Book of town legends

And this is the book by itsmy.land, published in Naryan-Mar lately that is following the ideas of incredible house names, started on our map. It consists of background stories of each one. It became a souvenir and is widely appreciated by tourists. Although was fiercly critisized by the local museum. We haven't been asked and haven't been participating in this work, if you ask, so won't judge it.

The board game "Naryanmania"

Later on the whole brand-new monopolia game clone was designed in Naryan-Mar, to our surprise. It's called Naryanmania and it's fully based on the original map with addition of the Nao mascots we created later. The realization has its flaws, yet we're very glad that our project grows in new incarnations.